


There's a Grief That Can't Be Spoken

by oldenuf2nb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4079266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldenuf2nb/pseuds/oldenuf2nb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Author/Artist LJ Name: Anonymous<br/>Songspiration: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables - Les Miserables<br/>Prompter: oakstone730<br/>Title: There’s a Grief That Can’t Be Spoken<br/>Prompt Number: 51<br/>Pairing(s): Harry/Draco<br/>Summary: For five years, Draco has watched the damage each successive anniversary of the battle of Hogwarts has done to the love of his life. He’s not sure he can do it anymore.<br/>Rating: PC-13<br/>Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.<br/>Warning(s): Angstiness, followed by what I’m sure can be considered fluff.<br/>Epilogue compliant? Noooooo.<br/>Word Count: 5720<br/>Author's Notes: Thank you B, for betaing this for me and acting as cheer leader. Don’t know what I’d do without you! Special thanks to the prompter; I’ve always thought of this piece as Harry’s Song. It was a pleasure to put those feelings into words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Grief That Can't Be Spoken

Draco wasn’t sure what woke him; he’d been sound asleep and then he was wide awake. He sat up in the center of the massive bed, pushed at the long pale fringe falling over his brow and peered across the shadowed bedroom. The house was quiet but for the sounds old houses made. He heard the creaks and groans of the old timbers in conjunction with the rhythmic tick of the ancient beech tree branches brushing against the large windows in the corner. They let meager light into the room, everything awash in shades of cool, pale blue. The walls, the white washed pine floor, the expanse of white sheets beside him. The empty expanse, and he sighed softly, the source of his wakefulness suddenly clear.  
  
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he reached for the thick white terri-cloth robe over the slipper chair in the corner and pushed his arms into the sleeves. He was grateful again for the warming charms his mother had placed on the gift she’d given him the previous Christmas. No matter how extensively they remodeled the old place, it seemed like it was always cold on the upper floors. He pushed his feet into fleece lined slippers, shivering a bit as the warmth enclosed his feet, and turned to make his way from the master bedroom.  
  
The halls were shadowed, even with the sconces burning dimly every few feet. The pale grey walls and the subtly patterned light green runners were a vast improvement over the moth eaten, mice nibbled tapestry carpeting they’d replaced but even so, the middle of the night was Draco’s least favorite time in the old place. He could feel the lingering remnants of all of the dark magic that had once thrived within the walls. He’d argued strenuously they should sell it or donate it to the Ministry, but his reasoning had fallen on deaf ears. And he knew why; nights like this, anniversaries of heartbreak and loss. He sighed, anchoring his long fringe behind his ear. A cool breeze brushed against his nape where his hair was shorter, and he shivered as he turned and headed down the stairs.  
  
He came level with the portrait on the landing, and the pretty young woman with the fall of reddish hair and wide green eyes gave him a nod. She was a vast improvement over his hideous Aunt Wulburga, but she always looked so sad. He looked up at her.  
  
“He’s down below?” he asked softly. She nodded. “How long?”  
  
“Perhaps an hour?” Her voice was faint and musical, her full pink lips pulled up in a melancholy smile. She was lovely and Draco could see why Severus had never been able to forget her. He sighed.  
  
“I’ll go get him.”  
  
“Thank you. This is a hard day for him.”  
  
Draco nodded, turning down the stairs. It was a hard day for a lot of people.  
  
The light wood of the staircase gleamed and Draco ran his hand over the bannister as he reached the carved newel post that was the showpiece of the restored entryway. Once the wood had been blackened with age, ugly snakes with exposed fangs entwined to make up the large, heavy post that anchored the stairs. Now honey colored wood depicted a phoenix in flight, wings spread, long intricate tail curved around the thick wooden bannister. Draco was so proud of it, so amazed by it. He’d known his partner had many skills, but he hadn’t known carving was one of them. It amused Draco that Potter hadn’t known it, either. Not until he’d produced the depiction of Fawkes in such lifelike detail. As he ran is fingers over the delicate cuts that made up the veins in each feather, he wondered if this shouldn’t have been some sort of foreshadowing, that Potter could recall the bird in such lifelike detail. He let his hand fall away. The bird was just another of Potter’s ghosts, hovering always.  
  
He traversed the long hallway that led toward the stairs to the basement kitchen. He passed their sitting room, with its comfortable leather furniture and welcoming fireplace. It was dark at this time of night but even so, the room was homey and restful. After that he passed the library, with its floor to ceiling bookshelves and the matching red leather chaise lounges he’d commandeered from the Manor. There had been another room after that one, but Potter sealed it off, covered the doorway as if it had never been. Even so, as Draco passed he could feel the dark whispers seeping through the wall. The tapestry couldn’t be removed. It was either seal the wall or burn the house to the ground to get rid of it. Draco wasn’t sure they’d made the right choice.  
  
When he turned to go down the kitchen stairs there was light at the bottom of the narrow staircase and whispers drifting up toward him. Draco gripped the railing in a cold hand as he made his way to the bottom of the stairs. The light was neither warm nor welcoming, but chilled, like moonlight on snow and the whispers roiled one on top of the other, not distinguishable as individual voices. Draco’s heart sank as he arrived in the kitchen, his eyes taking in the large room. They were almost all there, Potter’s ghosts, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Of course they’d be there on this night of all nights.  
  
He hated May the second. Hated it with a passion. For two weeks before and at least a week after, Potter would not be… Harry. Ordinarily open and easygoing, beginning around April fifteenth he would slowly withdraw, not just from Draco but from everyone. His appetite would fade, the normally tawny, robust color would leach from his skin and his usually bright eyes would lose their glow. The closer they got to the anniversary, to the Ministry obligations and the ceremonies to honor the dead, the worse it became. Always pained by the losses he somehow thought he could have prevented, on May first the ghosts that haunted Potter became more tangible, until even Draco could see them, and hear them. He was convinced Potter was somehow manifesting them, but that didn’t stop their presence and or prevent what seeing them did to him.  
  
Draco gripped the doorframe, quickly taking in the long, scarred table that filled the center of the large room, the cooker at one end and the fireplace at the other. Harry was seated where he always sat, halfway down on the left in the middle of the rough-hewn bench, his head still covered in the thick black cowlicks his pillow had created. His chin was resting on his forearm and his eyes were closed, long thick black lashes lying on his pale cheeks, but Draco could see he wasn’t asleep. He was listening, his shoulders held stiff and his hands clenched into fists. He was listening to the whispered voices all around him. The voices of his dead.  
  
Mad Eye Moody stood next to the fireplace, leaning on his crutch, his magical eye swiveling to take in the room. He seemed to see Draco and Draco stiffened, his knuckles white on the doorframe, but the crazed eye moved on, looking at what Draco couldn’t imagine. Sitting in the chair at the head of the table was Sirius Black, handsome, dissipated face drawn in lines of worry. Draco couldn’t hear what he was saying but he was obviously speaking to Remus Lupin, who sat immediately to his right. Next to Lupin was Nymphadora Tonks. His cousin, the one he’d never actually met, the blood traitor his aunt and father had railed against. Funny, his mother had never joined in. The Tonks he watched now was using her metamorphmagus powers to change her hair color and to transform her nose to a duck’s beak and then back again. The first time Draco saw this scene, the first year they’d been together, he’d asked Harry what she was doing and he said she’d been entertaining Ginny. And so she continued to do, year after year, even though Ginny was now married and living across town with her husband and two children.  
  
Hardest for Harry was the spirit at the end of the long table. There sat bright eyed, bright haired Fred Weasley, forever conversing and laughing with the twin he left behind. With all of the dead that surrounded Harry, Draco knew this was the one who hurt Harry the deepest. Possibly because he saw George Weasley on a regular basis, and knew how profoundly he’d been scarred by the death of his twin.  
  
Draco found out well after they’d begun seeing each other that Harry was an early investor in the twin’s now very successful business venture. He’d given them his Tri-wizard winnings, and Draco was flabbergasted. He understood when Harry explained why, but he still didn’t think he’d have been so altruistic. Since the end of the war and the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry spent a lot of time with George. Even more than he spent with Ron, but then Ron had Granger. George had his family but it wasn’t the same, and Harry of all people seemed to understand how lost he felt. Harry understood loss. It was all around him, all the time, clinging to him...  
  
Times like this made Draco despair if he’d ever be able to save Harry from himself. Year after year he went to the damned memorials and year after year they stole more of his peace, and his sanity. It infuriated Draco; if anyone had earned a peaceful existence, it was Harry. But the wizarding world seemed determined to force him to relive things he’d rather forget. Each year he was trotted out by the Ministry, and each year it took him longer and longer to recover. Draco stared at his rigid shoulders and pinched features, and couldn’t think of a thing to say, or do, to help him. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.  
  
Harry’s mouth moved as he spoke softly, and Draco froze, staring. Harry’s eyes didn’t open, otherwise he remained painfully still, but he spoke. Draco took a step closer and realized he was reciting what sounded like poetry.  
  
“…oh my friends, my friends forgive me -- that I live and you are gone, there’s a grief that can’t be spoken, there’s a pain goes on and on…”  
  
Draco’s fingers curled in his robe and his pressed his fist to his chest, right over where his heart gave a painful thud. He watched tears slip from beneath Harry’s lashes to spill down his face, pale silver ribbons on ashen cheeks.  
  
The Ministry added something different to the ceremony this year. He was fairly certain it had been Granger’s idea. She’d waxed poetic to them one evening after she and Weasley saw a West End production of Les Miserables. Draco’s parents took him to see it when he was very young, far before it would mean anything to him, during the time when Voldemort was gone and Father’s rhetoric had lost much of its venom. It was a fitting piece for the Memorial, the lament of young Raul on the evening after the revolution failed, and the man who sang the piece in commemoration of the Battle of Hogwarts was brilliant. His voice soaring and moving, echoing in the Grand Hall, Draco enjoyed his performance. It wasn’t until after he thought to look at Harry, and he’d been surprised at the devastation on his features. He shouldn’t have been.  
  
“…don’t ask me what your sacrifice was for. Empty chairs at empty tables, where my friends will meet no more….”  
  
Harry’s voice broke and he buried his face in his hands, and Draco couldn’t remain in the doorway any longer. He moved across the stone floor on silent feet until he was standing directly behind Harry, but then he paused. He didn’t want to frighten him, and he didn’t want him to think he’d been spying on him. He stood for a few moments in indecision.  
  
“Harry…” he finally whispered, lifting his hand, hesitating before laying it gently on his shoulder.  
  
Harry jerked at the sound of Draco’s voice and his touch, but he didn’t look up. Draco took a step closer and let his chest rest against Harry’s rigid back. “Harry, love, let them go.”  
  
Harry lifted his head and turned it, opening eyes that were red rimmed from exhaustion and grief. “I can’t,” he whispered, staring at the image of his godfather. “They’re always here today.”  
  
“The day is nearly over.” Draco ran his hand gently over Harry’s messy curls. “And they’re only here because you are. Come back to bed and let them go.”  
For the first time ever one of the spirits looked directly at Draco, and he felt a chill run across his shoulders. Sirius Black’s dark eyes studied Draco with what could only be described as fondness, and he nodded faintly, as if he approved of what he was saying.  
  
“Come with me, love,” Draco whispered. “Please.”  
  
He thought Harry was going to resist him, but instead he turned and stood. He was wearing only jeans and a t-shirt and when Draco took his hand his fingers felt like ice. It took every ounce of Draco’s self-control not to begin nagging him immediately, but he managed to refrain. He mentally celebrated the small victory of getting him to leave the kitchen and as they went through the doorway to the stairs he saw the figures behind Harry slowly fade away, only Black still watching them. He nodded at Draco again just before he vanished. The fire dimmed and died, the wall sconces did the same, and Draco clutched Harry’s cold hand as they climbed the stairs.  
  
They passed the cozy main floor rooms and the spectacular phoenix, and then climbed to the landing. Harry moved like a sleepwalker the entire way, and Draco was becoming concerned about his leaden step and his expressionless face. Harry was usually in hyperactive motion, lithe and graceful, and his face was equally animated, whether he was happy or angry or sad. You could read his emotions in his eyes. Not tonight; tonight there was nothing. It was terrifying.  
  
When they came even with Lily Potter’s portrait Harry paused, looking up into her beautiful face. She studied him with understanding tinged with sadness.  
“Mum,” he murmured brokenly, his hands coming to rest on the heavy gold frame. “I didn’t get it done soon enough. Too many were lost, too many…”  
  
“Sweetheart,” she whispered. “None of them were lost because of you. You ended it Harry. Never forget that.”  
  
He lowered his head and shook it sadly. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”  
  
“Oh, my darling. It was so much more than merely enough.” Her eyes lifted to Draco, and he straightened. “Let Draco take you to bed. Rest. You will feel better tomorrow.”  
  
Harry hesitated, then nodded, the movement heavy and tired. Draco gave her a quick nod, then caught Harry’s arm in his hand and urged him up the staircase. He could feel her green eyes following them as they climbed.  
  
When they reached the large corner bedroom that once belonged to Sirius, Draco led Harry straight to the bed, found his wand on the bedside table next to Harry’s, and cast a warming charm on the sheets. He then reached for the hem of Harry’s t-shirt and pulled it up and over his head, tossing it towards a laundry basket in the corner. The blue light caught on the planes and angles of Harry’s broad shoulders and sculpted chest, turning the lingering scars on his torso silver. Draco had scars, but Harry had scars of his own. He stood wooden under Draco’s hands as he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans and pushed them down to pool around his bare feet on the floor.  
  
Draco pushed Harry to sit on the edge of the thick mattress, pulled the jeans off of his feet and tossed them aside as well.  
  
“Lie down, love,” he murmured gently, and Harry did, letting his head fall on a thick pillow, stretching his beautiful, muscled legs out on the soft cotton. Draco grabbed the bedding and carefully covered Harry to his neck. He saw the shudder that went through his body but was surprised when Harry reached up and caught his wrist in a cold hand. He looked up into Draco’s face, wide eyes searching.  
  
“Why do you do this?”  
  
Draco frowned down at him. “Do what?”  
  
“Put up with me. There’s so much… wrong.”  
  
Draco sighed heavily and sat on the edge of the mattress near Harry’s hip, turning his hand to interlock their fingers. He ended up curling his other hand around both in an attempt to force some warmth into the cold skin.  
  
“Sweetheart, considering what you’ve been through, there’s so much right.”  
  
Harry’s eyes searched Draco’s face as if he thought he might be lying.  
  
“We’ve all got ghosts, Harry. Yours are just visible.” Draco ran his thumb over Harry’s knuckles. “I think it’s because your magic gets stronger when you’re upset.” Harry closed his eyes and sighed. “And today was bound to be… hard.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I wonder what would happen if one year I just refused to attend.”  
  
Draco squeezed his hand. “Not a damned thing.” Harry’s eyes opened on Draco’s, his expression clearly incredulous. “What are they going to do to you? Arrest you?” Draco shook his head. “The worst that could happen is Skeeter might write a negative piece for the  _Prophet_.”  
  
Harry huffed out a dry chuckle. “Wow. That would be new.”  
  
It wouldn’t. The amount of vitriol the woman spewed when their relationship became public was astonishing. Draco believed it was because the old bat had a crush on Harry. Harry thought it was her inherent homophobia. All Draco knew was she couldn’t seem to let it go. Every time they appeared in public together, there was some snotty comment in her column the next day. He fully expected a repeat of her ‘war hero and his Death Eater lover’ in the coverage of the memorial in tomorrow’s paper. She’d sneered at him when he’d passed her in the Great Hall that morning. He’d ignored her but for a smug smile.  
  
“Kingsley would kill me,” Harry muttered. Draco sighed in exasperation.  
  
“Harry, you don’t get it. You killed the Dark Lord. Our illustrious Minister for Magic can’t touch you.”  
  
“I work for him, Draco. He could fire me.”  
  
“Like he would,” Draco scoffed. “He’d look like an arse. And so what if he does?”  
  
The silence of their bedroom following this statement was complete. Harry stared at him in consternation. “I have to work, Draco.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “You don’t. Between what your parents and Black left you, you don’t need to work ever again unless you want to.”  
  
When he spoke, Harry’s voice was raw. “People count on me.”  
  
Irritation filled Draco’s chest. “Maybe it’s time for them to count on someone else.” He tried to pull his hands away, suddenly desperate to stand and put some distance between them, but Harry wouldn’t let go.  
  
“Don’t.” Draco huffed but stopped struggling to free his hands. “Draco. Please. Look at me.”  
  
Draco reluctantly looked down to find Harry’s gaze fixed on his face, his eyes overly bright.  
  
“Oh, don’t you dare,” he said crossly. “Don’t you dare do that to me. I’m not the villain here, Harry. ”  
  
“I know that,” Harry said quickly, blinking. “I know of everyone, you think of me first.”  
  
“ _You_  need to think of you first. Until you do that, every May first is going to be the same. Every year you’re going to let them take more and more of you.” Draco’s throat grew tight, and he had to push through the constriction to speak. “And one year, I’m going to go down to the fucking kitchen, and you’re going to have become another of your ghosts, just another bloody war casualty, and I won’t be able to reach you.” He shook his head. “You can’t ask me to watch it, Harry. Because I can’t. I won’t.”  
  
Draco hadn’t expected to say the words aloud but once he had he realized it was the truth. For five years, he’d watched more and more of Harry disappear each May first, seen how it had taken him longer and longer to come back. This year was the worst. He didn’t know if it was the haunting lyrics of the song that hit Harry so hard or just the strain of the anniversary itself, but when Draco walked into the kitchen he’d felt further away than ever. If Harry was determined to keep doing this year after year, Draco couldn’t watch it.  
  
Harry scrabbled to sit up, his grip on Draco’s hands hard. His eyes were so wide a sliver of white ringed the bright green iris. “Are you… going to leave me?”  
Draco took a deep breath and held it for a second as the pain around his heart intensified. He didn’t want to. Gods, he didn’t want to.  
  
“The people at that ceremony today,” he said instead of answering, “the ones you say count on you… you’ve already given them their lives, their families, their future. You sacrificed everything, were willing to die for those people. Isn’t it enough? When is it enough, Harry? Because if you keep going the way you are, there isn’t going to be enough of you left for us. And I’m a selfish bastard, because I want you for myself.” He closed his eyes and leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “The people haunting you in that kitchen knew what they were doing, what they were fighting for. And those people today? They’ve had you. When does our turn start?”  
  
He felt Harry’s body trembling and his heart hitched when Harry fought to free his hands. Draco wanted to weep, sure Harry was going to pull away, that he’d pushed too hard and now he’d have to follow through with it. But instead of pulling away, Draco felt cold hands come to rest on his cheeks and he opened his eyes.  
  
Harry’s eyes were close but for the first time all day, Draco saw  _Harry_  in them and his heart surged. He covered the hands on his cheeks.  
  
“I can’t lose you,” Harry said. “I won’t. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted, just for me, and I won’t let you go. So in answer to your question,” a low light began to glow in the pale eyes, “it starts now, Draco. Right now.”  
  
Draco’s heart soared, and there were myriad things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Harry angled his head and within moments, Draco’s lips were otherwise engaged.  
  
_Two years later…_  
  
“Master Draco?”  
  
Draco stiffened, his head jerking up. He studied the small house-elf dressed in a pristine white tea towel who stood next to his desk, her huge eyes watching him impassively. He sat back in his desk chair and slipped the reading glasses he denied he needed from his nose.  
  
“Yes, Tinky?”  
  
“You asked Tinky to tell you when luncheon was ready.” She linked her hands calmly in front of her. “It is being ready, sir.”  
  
Tinky had been one of his mother’s house-elves, and she’d been given the choice of staying at the Manor or having a family of her own. Draco was delighted she’d chosen to come with Harry and him, even if Granger gave him the stink eye every time she saw her.  
  
“Is it noon already?” Draco was researching a new pain potion the American’s had seen some success with, and he’d come into his office right after breakfast. Hard to believe five hours had already passed. “Where are Potter and the wolf cub?”  
  
Tinky gave him a mildly reproachful look. “Master Harry and Master Teddy are working in the garden.”  
  
Draco pushed back his chair and stood. “Which means they’ll be covered in mulch. Could you ask them to come in and wash up, please, Tinky? If I have to look at dirty fingernails on the both of them over lunch I’ll lose my appetite.”  
  
She gave him a look that told him he wasn’t fooling her a bit, but nodded. “Of course, Master Draco.”  
  
She popped out, and Draco pushed his chair under the antique desk that had once been his father’s. “Cheeky creature,” he muttered, but there was a smile pulling at the corner of his lips.  
  
His office was at the back of the house, which explained why he hadn’t heard Harry and Teddy come downstairs and have breakfast. Harry knew Draco he was doing research on several new medicinal potions, and he never disturbed him when he was working. Well, not regularly, Draco thought with a smirk as he recalled how they’d christened Draco’s office when they’d first moved in. It entertained Harry no end to recall being bent over one of Lucius Malfoy’s desks. He laughed like a loon after he came all over the top of it and Draco ran through their house looking for a dust cloth while everything was still in boxes. Harry even threatened to write his name with his release to see if it remained stained into the surface. Draco ended up using his own shirt to wipe it clean. After that he stored soft cloths in the bottom drawer – just in case.  
  
He walked through the downstairs of their country home, admiring the spring sunshine as it flowed in through the large windows and turned the floors honey gold. The house could not be more different from Grimmauld Place. They’d tried to wipe the darkness from the old place, but came to the conclusion the dark magic was soaked into the walls and floors. Draco wasn’t sure burning it to the ground would help – like the Manor, he was convinced the ugliness was so pervasive it had fouled even the foundation.  
  
After the last time they attended the war memorial ceremonies, and how close they came to losing everything, it wasn’t hard to convince Harry to move out of Grimmauld Place. Within a week he resigned from the Auror’s Department and donated the old house to the Ministry to do with whatever they wanted. Kingsley hadn’t been happy but as Draco predicted, he hadn’t said anything in public other than ‘he wished Harry well in whatever he chose to do’. There was hoopla in the media and some of their old schoolmates accused him a ‘selling out’, but the people who mattered understood. Longbottom was the first to say publicly that ‘Harry had done enough and earned his peace’, and the mad Lovegood creature sent them a basket when they bought the house full of things Draco still hadn’t deciphered. He did know if he never drank dandelion tea again, it would be too soon.  
  
The ones who surprised Draco the most were the Weaslette, and Weasley and Granger. He’d expected them to protest, at the very least. But the red haired wench, who’s tea Draco still wanted to poison, merely squeezed Harry’s arm and said ‘good’ when he announced to the assembled Weasley clan he was leaving the Ministry. Granger came to Harry with tears in her eyes and hugged him for a long, long time, finally whispering ‘I’m so glad’ near his ear. And Weaslbee merely gripped Harry’s shoulder and nodded before turning away. It had been odd on so many levels Draco couldn’t name them all. When Molly Weasley asked Harry what he planned to do, he looked at Draco and said, “Enjoy my life.” Draco excused himself and spent a few moments in the loo, until the pressing need to burst into tears passed.  
  
He heard a high-pitched squeal outside and walked to the French doors that led from their dining room outside. The verdant green lawn rolled away from the house and was neatly trimmed, and the banks of azalea’s lining it were a riotous display of reds and hot pinks and purples. Baskets overflowing with flowers hung from the edge of the pergola over the slate patio, and out in the middle of the lawn a fountain sent streams of water into the air, arcing like diamonds in the sunshine to fall and splash in the wide basin. The lawn and patio were the reason they’d bought the house; Draco could handle any remodeling that needed to be done inside, but the yard was all Harry’s. Draco thought perhaps one of the most surreal moments of his life was listening to his mother and Harry discuss fertilizer and trimming techniques over tea.  
  
He smiled as he saw a small boy with white blond hair race around the fountain followed by a handsome man with jet black hair and a rangy build. Draco didn’t understand why Teddy would want hair the color of his when he could make it any color of the rainbow. Harry said it was because Teddy loved him. Draco found that both highly unlikely and secretly heartwarming. The boy dodged this way and that but he was no match for the long legs and inherent grace of the man, and he caught up to him and swung the child into the air accompanied by another scream of delight. Harry held Teddy upside down by his skinny ankles, and Teddy threw his arms around Harry’s slender waist, pressing his face into Harry’s stomach. Harry laughed, his white teeth flashing in the sunlight. He’d never admit it aloud to a living soul, but every time Teddy showed his unreserved affection for his godfather, Draco loved the brat a little bit more. Harry needed to be loved like that, needed the hugs. Harry soaked the attention in like flowers soaked in the sunlight, and the more affection lavished on him the brighter he bloomed.  
  
Draco studied his laughing, sun kissed face, his heart full. This was an utterly different man than the one Harry was just two years ago. All Draco had to do to know he’d been right that dark, sad night was to look at Harry now. The melancholy that clung to him for so long was gone, and he seemed taller, the weight of the world gone from his shoulders.  
  
As the man and the boy approached, Draco swung open the French door. Harry looked up at the sound of the door opening, his smile spreading and his eyes warm.  
  
“Well, look who climbed out of his books.”  
  
Teddy turned his head, looking at Draco upside down. “Hi, Draco!” he called. “I’m upside down.”  
  
Draco fought a smile as he studied the irrepressible seven year old. “So you are. Better to be upside down now than after lunch I suppose.”  
  
“Yeah, after lunch I might barf.”  
  
Harry laughed as Draco made a face. “Charming,” he said dryly. “But probably accurate.” He looked up into Harry’s face. “You do plan to put him down at some point, I assume.”  
  
“I do. In fact,” he flipped the boy over and caught him easily, setting him on his feet. Draco admired the muscles that bulged under his red t-shirt. Teddy giggled. “Now seems a good time.” They both came to the open door.  
  
“Shoes,” Draco reminded Teddy gently when he started to walk through the door wearing his dirty trainers.  
  
“Oh, yeah.” The boy struggled to toe them off then shot through the door, sliding on the smooth floor in his socks. “Is lunch ready? I’m starving.”  
“You’re always starving,” Draco said.  
  
“Growing boys and all that,” Harry said as he paused and left his trainers next to Ted’s. As he came through the door, he kissed Draco. He tasted of sunshine and warm breezes, and when he would have pulled away Draco caught his t-shirt in his hand and held him in place, deepening the kiss, slipping his tongue along Harry’s lower lip. Harry made a pleased sound and slipped his hand around Draco’s nape.  
  
“Ew, gross!” Teddy shouted, and Harry smiled against Draco’s lips.  
  
“I’ll have you know I am not gross,” Draco said as he pulled back.  
  
“Definitely not gross.” Harry grinned and caressed Draco’s ass in a smooth pass as he walked into the room. Fortunately Teddy had already run through the kitchen door and hadn’t seen the sneaky maneuver.  
  
“Behave yourself,” Draco scolded, but there was no heat in it.  
  
“You like it.” Harry winked at him and followed the child. Draco trailed behind him to the kitchen door, enjoying the way Harry’s arse looked in his worn jeans, the way his lithe, muscled body moved. Draco leaned against the doorframe and watched Harry take the child to the sink and supervise his hand washing, drying Teddy’s hands when he was done, then swinging the small boy up to place him on one of the barstools next to the kitchen’s center island. He pulled another out with his foot as Tinky levitated plates piled high with sandwiches and crisps onto the thick butcher block top in front of them, and straddled the seat. Draco couldn’t help but compare this bright, happy room to the one in the basement at Grimauld Place, and he knew whatever he’d had to say or do to free Harry from that house, from the life that was slowly suffocating him, had been the right thing.  
  
Harry turned and looked back at Draco. He cocked his head to one side, a smile in his eyes, and he looked so young and so  _free_  that Draco’s heart soared. “Are you going to join us?” Harry asked. Draco nodded, moving to join them.

  
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

 

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